How the Silicon Valley Innovation Ecosystem Creates Success

Silicon Valley boasts perhaps the most unique, difficult-to-replicate regional innovation ecosystem in the world. The presentation explores five key characteristics that make Silicon Valley so distinct: 1) its five world-class research universities, five U.S. national laboratories, and dozens of world-class corporate and private research institutions; 2) a half-century of intense federal R&D investment; 3) 40 percent of U.S. venture capital invested and seven of America’s top ten VC investors; 4) 6 of the world’s top 10 ICT companies located with a ten-square-mile radius; and 5) a concentration of both advanced-degree holders and foreign-born start-up founders more than twice the national average. The presentation also explains how companies in the Valley are different, particularly that they use a “need-seeker” strategy that strives to address unarticulated needs and seeks to be first-to-market with the resulting new products and services.